


The Big Easy

by fhsa_archivist



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-15
Updated: 2007-09-15
Packaged: 2019-02-05 18:37:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12799998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhsa_archivist/pseuds/fhsa_archivist
Summary: Original vampire fic, set in New Orleans.





	The Big Easy

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Haven, the archivist: This story was originally archived at [Fandom Haven Story Archive (FHSA)](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom_Haven_Story_Archive), was scheduled to shut down at the end of 2016. To preserve the archive, I began working with the OTW to transfer the stories to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. If you are this creator and the work hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Fandom Haven Story Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/fhsa/profile).

The ever present toiling of overworked air conditioners couldn't quite abate the almost claustrophobic humidity of the long southern night. It left people restless and careless, searching uneasily for something they couldn't name. The local constabulary moved amoung the gathering crowd, quelling errant moments of bravado and pomp as they occurred. 

 

One such altercation lingered, despite the efforts of the gendarmes, devolving in finality into broken bottles and handcuffs, the participants lead away restrained and bloody.

 

He singled her out as she moved from her companions, making her way out of the crowd. She held one hand to her side where a lucky bit of jagged glass had found her flesh. Pressed by the crowd, he allowed himself to be jostled into her as she passed him.

 

Her quick apology died on her lips as his hands went to her waist to steady her. He saw the recognition before she pushed away from him, stumbling backwards. He could see her discomfort, he smelled the spike of adrenaline as it hit her bloodstream, heard her heart as it quickened. His skin registered the rush of warmth in hers as blood rose to flood the capillaries just beneath the skin with sweet, fragrant heat that soaked into his senses. He realized she knew what he was. 

 

He raised his fingers, damp from her blood, to his mouth.

 

She turned, melting into the crowd. He followed while she climbed a set of back stairs leading to the street where he knew several other officers waited. Her escape route was poorly lit and the vampire in him crawled a little closer toward awareness.

 

At the first landing, his low voice stopped her. 

 

"I've tasted what you are, and I can smell everything you're feeling. Your sweat, salty, like the ocean, or life itself, fresh and colder at the back of your neck where it's wetting your hair."

 

Closer still.

 

"And your breath tastes sweeter," he whispered, only inches away from her. He knew she was startled to find him so close. "There's more oxygen when you exhale because you're breathing faster," he explained.

 

The vampire moved closer behind her and she could feel the coolness from his body despite the 90 degree heat. She knew vampires were only warm just after they've fed.

 

"I can smell the adrenaline in your blood, mixed with fear and hunger. I can smell the anger, too, and how aroused you are. It's on your skin," he leaned closer, his low, grainy voice at her ear, "between your legs, sweet, and hot. And your blood..."

 

He inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of blood as it pulsed, coppery and hot through her body, flushing her skin with colour. Her heart beat strong within her chest, faster now to accommodate the adrenaline that flowed through her veins. It was the sweetest time to drink. 

 

His lips brushed her hair where it lay against her neck, the only contact between their two bodies.. 

 

"Can you feel me?" he whispered into her ear. 

 

He moved down, his mouth below and just forward of her earlobe where blood surged through the carotid artery, thick and dark red and so close to the surface. He could hear it rush through her veins, roaring into the chambers of her heart and warming the oxygen in her lungs. The careless splash of blood that had seeped between her fingers had been the first human blood he'd tasted in centuries. The craving for it, barely controlled and, at best, only held at bay, had surfaced again in a pyre of agony and repression. 

 

But the blood lust always brought with it another, equally demanding, thirst. He had long denied himself the palliative of human blood flowing through his veins, warming and coaxing what little life was left inside of him. He tempered the bloodlust by giving in to the carnal lust. The need for the release of another body was consummate and inescapable and the only thing that drove the hunger for human blood back beneath the surface. 

 

But he knew her now as he knew no other living human being...he knew only this body would sate his hunger this time.

 

And he knew she felt the hunger, too.

 

It was the age old lure of the vampire. Nature had taken many things from this unnatural result of selection, but in return she had left them with sexuality that few could resist. It pulled at the woman now, and he could smell it. 

 

"Can you feel me?" he whispered again, his mouth at the slope of her neck where it blended into her shoulder, his breath moist on her skin.


End file.
